Survival: Touching the Void and Joe Simpson Essay examples

Submitted By sperera13
Words: 829
Pages: 4

There is no limit to the human sprit’s will to survive. According to this quote being a survivor is someone who conquered, or is conquering, the damage that has been done to them. In order to survive it takes both physical and mental strength such as Joe Simpson who survived miraculously, after falling down into a crevasse and as well as subsisting to three days with no food or water. A fictional survivor also represents pure and emotional strength to a degree like Katniss Everdeen who survived the 74th Annual Hunger Games. Katniss was pitted against twenty-four tributes where only one person would win the games only through a murderous blood bath.

In 1985, Joe Simpson and his buddy Simon Yates travelled to the Andes to climb the top of Siula Grande. When the pair reached the summit; disaster struck. Joe plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge resulting in a rupture in his leg. As a blizzard raged through, Simon forced himself to cut the rope moments before Joe would have been pulled to his own death. Simon retuned back to camp crowded with guilt over abandoning Joe. Staggeringly, Joe survived the fall in the crevasse in spite of the fact that he was crippled, malnourished, frostbitten and suffering of hypothermia. However Simpson, accounting vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength he crawled over cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp in a matter of hours before Simon Yates planned to leave.

During Joes will to survive, he first found himself clinging onto a rope in thin air, only 50 feet away from falling into a deep crevasse. That was when Simon decided to cut the rope leaving Simpson fall into the crevasse at peril. Simon thought long and hard about cutting the rope he said “ rather than just sitting here, feeling sorry for Joe, Ill get on with it or risk dyeing”. Joe found himself in a crevasse with a broken leg he knew he wasn’t going to die; he was just scared of the fact of being in a crevasse considering they are not for human habitation. Simon decided to abseil deeper into the crevasse. Simpson quoted “ You got to make decisions, you got to keep making decisions, even if they’re wrong, you know, If you don’t make decisions, you’re stuffed”. However Joe kept making positive decisions and finally got himself out of his situation.

Katniss Everdeen lives in the world of Panem, where the hunger games exist. There is no escape from the games, but this year could be the year when everything falls apart for Katniss. On a ‘special day’ called the reaping every citizen of district twelve comes to the reaping where two tributes will be chosen through a lottery-like system. This day was an ordinary day for many citizens but for Katniss it was all different when her loyal sister Prim was chosen. Kantniss’s world fell apart, she didn’t know what to do, thoughts were swimming around her brain, she knew she had to do something so she volunteered. However this was not a good